Roots to Renewal

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Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner

This is the second episode of our second season, and what an honor and pleasure it is to welcome Mary Berry, Director of The Berry Center in Kentucky, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to bringing focus, knowledge and cohesion to the work of changing our industrial agricultural system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local communities.” Mary and her brother, Den, were raised by their parents, Wendell and Tanya Berry, at Lanes Landing Farm in Henry County, Kentucky from the time she was six years old. She attended Henry County public schools and graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1981. She farmed for a living in Henry County starting out in dairy farming, growing Burley tobacco, and later diversifying to organic vegetables, pastured poultry and grass-fed beef. 

Mary speaks all over the country as a proponent of agriculture of the middle, in defense of small farmers, and in the hope of restoring a culture and an economy that has been lost in rural America. In this episode Mary shares her thoughts on the importance of place in our work and lives, the culture of agriculture and its vital role in supporting healthy local communities, the essential work of educating young farmers, and her father’s legacy and influence on her life and work.

If you’d like to learn more about Mary’s work and The Berry Center, visit https://berrycenter.org.
Donate to Hawthorne Valley.

More About Mary Berry
Mary is married to Trimble County, Kentucky farmer, Steve Smith, who started the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farming endeavor in the state of Kentucky. If daughters Katie Johnson, Virginia Aguilar and Tanya Smith choose to stay in Henry County, they will be the ninth generation of their family to live and farm there.

Mary currently serves on the Boards of Directors of United Citizens Bank in New Castle, Kentucky, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Sterling College in Vermont. She speaks all over the country as a proponent of agriculture of the middle, in defense of small farmers, and in the hope of restoring a culture and an economy that has been lost in rural America. Her writings have appeared in various publications and collections, including “Letters to a Young Farmer: On Food, Farming, and Our Future” (Princeton Agricultural Press, 2016) and the introduction for a new edition of essays, “Our Sustainable Table”, Robert Clark, ed. (Counterpoint, 2017).

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner

With this episode, we're excited to officially launch season two of our Roots to Renewal podcast, and we are thrilled to have Greg Watson as our guest to kick things off. Greg is the director of policy and systems design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and a self-described lifelong student. He has spent nearly 50 years studying systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and has worked to apply that understanding to achieve a more just and sustainable world. In this episode, you'll hear more about Greg's amazing biography and his involvement in many future bearing and life bearing initiatives as he and Hawthorne Valley's executive director and podcast host Martin Ping, take a deep dive on the topics of systems thinking and new economics, creating new forms of cooperation, the wisdom of nature, and so much more.

If you'd like to learn more about Greg's work and the Schumacher Center for a New Economics visit https://centerforneweconomics.org. For more information on the World Game Workshop, visit https://worldgameworkshop.org.

Donate to Hawthorne Valley here.

More about Greg Watson:
Greg is Director of Policy and Systems Design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. His work currently focuses on community food systems and an initiative to improve global systems literacy informed by a reimagining of Bucky Fuller’s World Game Workshop. Greg has spent nearly 50 years studying systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and has worked to apply that understanding to achieve a more just and sustainable world. He has served on the board of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and as a juror for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

In 1978 he organized a network of urban farmers’ markets in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area. He served as Commissioner of Agriculture in Massachusetts from 1990 to 1993 and again from 2012 to 2014 when he launched a statewide urban agriculture grants program.

Greg gained hands-on experience in organic farming, aquaculture, wind-energy technology, and passive solar design at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, first as Education Director and later as Executive Director. There he led the effort to create the Cape & Islands Self Reliance energy cooperative.  He served four years as Executive Director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a multicultural grassroots organizing and planning organization where he initiated one of the nation’s first urban agriculture projects (anchored by a 10,000 squa

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner

This is our twelfth episode of the podcast and this time Martin interviewed one of Hawthorne Valley’s longest standing coworkers, Gary Lamb. Gary is currently the director of the Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research and its Ethical Technology Initiative. Over his 36 years of employment at Hawthorne Valley, Gary also served the Farm Store manager, school development and admissions director, and high school economics teacher. His professional background includes a degree in civil technology and mathematics, and employment in the fields of building construction, medical technology, and manufacturing. His most recent publication, A Road to Sacred Creation: Rudolf Steiner’s Perspectives on Technology, Volume 1, was released in August 2021 by SteinerBooks. 

From an explanation of Steiner’s idea of social three-folding, to the impact of technology on education and the future of humanity itself, to a discussion about the ultimate uniting social force needed to allow humanity to benefit from technological advances, this episode is sure to leave you with much to consider.

Learn more about The Center for Social Research at Hawthorne Valley and its Ethical Technology initiative here
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Purchase A Road to Sacred Creation: Rudolf Steiner's Perspectives on Technology, Volume 1

More About Gary Lamb
Prior to editing A Road to Sacred Creation: Rudolf Steiner’s Perspectives on Technology, Volume 1, which was released in August 2021 by SteinerBooks, Gary edited Steinerian Economics with Sarah Hearn (Mecca), a compendium of Rudolf Steiner’s views on economics published by Adonis Press. He also authored books on Waldorf education and associative economics—Social Mission of Waldorf Education, Wellsprings of the Spirit, and Associative Economics—published by AWSNA Publications (now Waldorf Publications). Gary was also the managing editor of The Threefold Review, a journal based on Rudolf Steiner’s ideas about a threefold social organism. 

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner

Recently our Executive Director, and podcast host, Martin Ping sat down with Melissa Auf der Maur, an artist, musician, photographer and writer – probably best known in musical circles for her turn as the bass player for the band Hole from 1994-1999. Melissa is revered locally as social entrepreneur, she’s the co-founder and director of Basilica Hudson, a nonprofit multidisciplinary art center in Hudson, NY.  

We consider Basilica to be a sister organization to Hawthorne Valley. Not only are we neighbors geographically, our missions are very much aligned when it comes to supporting the arts and addressing the important environmental and social issues of our times, and we are grateful that Melissa said yes to sitting down with us. Hers is an intriguing biography and it was a fun, and wide-ranging conversation as she and Martin touched on everything from Melissa’s musical career, to the origin story of Basilica Hudson, to the impact of gentrification on the city of Hudson and its surrounding communities, to the role the city of Montreal played in her formative years. Coincidentally, Melissa also happens to be celebrating her 50th trip around the sun this year.

Visit Basilica Hudson's website. Make a donation.
Learn about their Basilica Green program.
Donate to Hawthorne Valley.

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner

We are happy to be back after a short hiatus for a conversation with John Fullerton, founder of the Connecticut-based Capital Institute, a think-and-do tank with a mission to reimagine our economic and financial systems to promote transformation to a more just and regenerative world. 

An unconventional economist, impact investor, writer, and philosopher, John is the architect of Regenerative Economics, first conceived in his 2015 booklet, “Regenerative Capitalism: How Universal Patterns and Principles will Shape the New Economy.” He and our podcast host Martin Ping – Hawthorne Valley’s executive director – sat down in the midst of John’s newly launched 8-week course, “Introduction to Regenerative Economics: New Ways of Thinking, Seeing, Being and Managing for the 21st Century,” of which Martin is part of the first cohort. The aim of the course is to provide a living systems approach to redesigning our economy so that long-term prosperity, human dignity, social equity, and planetary wellness can be viably sustained throughout the world. 

Let’s listen in as John and Martin explore the concept of regenerative economics as an alternative way forward, and the urgent need to rethink an economy based on exponential growth as the source of our prosperity – the consequences of which are being felt in unprecedented ways.

Visit the Capital Institute's website.
Donate to Hawthorne Valley.

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm; Music by Aaron Dessner

In this episode, we stayed in our own back yard – right here on Hawthorne Valley’s 900-acre Biodynamic farm. Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director Martin Ping sat down with Spencer Fenniman, Director of Farm Operations, and Jess Brobst, our Dairy Herd Manager. Together they discuss the essence of biodynamic farming, the pedagogical function of the Farm, and the role of art on the Farm. 

We are very excited to share this behind the scenes glimpse and for you to hear firsthand the intentionality and profound thought that goes into biodynamic farming. We are grateful to Spencer and Jess for taking time out of their long and incredibly busy days to share their perspectives, and are filled with gratitude for their many contributions to Hawthorne Valley.

Spencer Fenniman (he/him) is the Farming Director at Hawthorne Valley Farm. He has managed fields and fertility at Hawthorne Valley since arriving in 2012. As a younger person, his studies in Anthropology, food geography, and something-useful-to-do-outside-ski-season led him to a series of organic and biodynamic farming apprenticeships. The more he practices nature-based farming, the more he appreciates the land and the deep knowledge, listening, creativity and dedication of his agricultural teachers. For Spencer, biodynamic farming is a way of life based in connection, and managing the soil, the livestock and the ecology in a holistic manner provides the fertile grounds for personal, productive and pedagogical connection. He lives in sight of the farm with his wife and 2 children.

Jess Brobst  Hawthorne Valley Farm as a whole farm apprentice in 2016 before moving up the ranks to herd manager in 2018. Jess grew up on a farm in West Virginia and comes with a lot of experience working with animals. She has an extraordinary work ethic and has an amazing way with cows. When she isn’t working on the farm with the dairy herd, Jess is at home making beautiful artwork, studying Waldorf pedagogy through Hawthorne Valley’s Alkion program or walking with her dogs, Nina and Josie.

Visit the farm's website.
Donate to Hawthorne Valley.

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner.

In this episode, Hawthorne Valley’s Executive Director Martin Ping had a chance to chat with artist and educator Martina Müller. Together they explore the many ways that art enlivens our lives – from the practice of observation intrinsic in the experience of making art and its impact on our interpersonal relationships, and even society as a whole – to the way that creativity allows us to access our more divine selves. Martina believes that we’re all artists because we can all learn to make art.

Martina studied art and English at Ruhr University in Bochum Germany and Emerson College in England, and holds a four-year full-time Waldorf Teaching Diploma from the Institute of Waldorf Pedagogy in Witten-Annen, Germany with a specialization in teaching high school art and art history. A faculty member of The Alkion Center at Hawthorne Valley since 2003, and Senior Artistic Director and Curator for the new gallery Lightforms Art Center in Hudson, Martina taught middle and high school art for two decades at Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School. An accomplished artist and internationally published children’s book illustrator, Martina is a founding member of Gallery 345 in Hudson. She has exhibited her artwork in numerous venues throughout New York and Massachusetts including Sculpture Now at the Mount in Lenox, MA, Flying Horse Sculpture Show, Hamilton, MA, Diana Felber Gallery, La Mama La Galleria in New York City, Center Point Gallery, in New York City and many others. She creates her paintings, sculptures and installation pieces by bringing meditative content inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner and great spiritual documents from many spiritual traditions together with the living forces of nature. She lives in Ghent, NY where she maintains her studio.

Visit Lightforms Art Center's website
Visit Martina's website
Donate to Hawthorne Valley

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm. Music by Aaron Dessner.

In this episode we’re excited to share a follow up conversation with our very first podcast guest, Frances Moore Lappé. We are delighted to acknowledge and celebrate the release of the 50th anniversary edition of her seminal book, Diet for a Small Planet. 

Once again Frankie and our Executive Director, Martin Ping engage in uplifting conversation on topics of the day that are also woven into Diet for a Small Planet: living democracy; the importance of listening, curiosity, and imagination in building frameworks of understanding; and fostering interconnectedness for the ultimate purpose of nurturing life on Earth.

Purchase Diet for A Small Planet
https://democracymovement.us
Donate to Hawthorne Valley

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Aaron Dessner

In this episode Hawthorne Valley's Executive Director Martin Ping enjoys a wide ranging conversation with John  Bloom, General Secretary of The Anthroposophical Society in America and former Vice President of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance, about the role of money and philanthropy in the creative process, and how money can serve human destiny and foster creativity. In the course of their conversation. You'll hear John mention Free Columbia and now independent 501c3 art and social change initiative that was incubated at Hawthorne Valley, and whose pedagogy is inspired by contemplative inquiry, aesthetic education and action research.

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!

Send us Fan Mail

Sponsored by Tierra Farm | Music by Aaron Dessner

Martin welcomes activist, author, entrepreneur, and long-time friend Judy Wicks into conversation about her life's work to build economies based on cooperation and local self-reliance.  In 2001, she founded the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, and co-founded the international Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. BALLE now includes some 30,000 local independent businesses in the U.S. and Canada. Judy envisions an economy that provides for the needs of all people while working in harmony with natural systems.

2:50 All Together Now began in 2019, Judy talks about the impulse for founding this initiative.

4:00 Judy talks about the importance of building an economy with local self-reliance at its core.

5:00 We need a revolution of values. Many of our problems stem from a society that values money more than life itself. 

5:30 Judy's first experience with indigenous people was when she lived in an Eskimo Village in 1969 as a VISTA volunteer. She recounts what this experience taught her about collaboration and sharing and how these lessons impacted her life.

7:45 Judy’s second experience with Indigenous wisdom was during the Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. This experience taught her the concept of local self-reliance. NAFTA was threatening the survival of the Zapatista people with GMO corn by making communities dependent on long-distance supply chains controlled by increasingly powerful multinational corporations that were putting local farmers and food-producers out of business.

10:25 What led to the founding of BALLE – network of locally self-reliant businesses.

11:30 Judy goes to Standing Rock to support Indigenous People in their efforts to honor Mother Earth, and protect children and the future by stopping the Dakota Access pipeline.

14:00 Lakota Prophesy of the Black Snake: fossil fuel industry and pipelines.

14:30 Judy realized the Black Snake in PA is fracking – and she takes up cause to stop fracking and begins to understand that the only way to go about this is by electing the right politicians.

16:00 Now more than ever we need to look to Indigenous wisdom to find the path forward. 

17:00 Story of White Dog Café and Judy’s epiphany about ethical business practices.

18:45 Transformational moment for Judy in what makes a sustainable business work: cooperation and a sustainable business system.

20:00 Judy sells White Dog and dedicates rest of her life to building local economies; and starting nonprofits as the vehicle to do so.

22:15 Judy’s work in increasing supply and connecting farmers and entrepreneurs; and inc

Thanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley’s Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. 

Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you’d like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.


If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!